News: Blippar Bounces Back with Web-Based AR Platform

After one of Britain's "Brothers Bling" bought Blippar out of bankruptcy, the mobile augmented reality company is getting back to business with the addition of web-based AR capabilities to its platform.

On Thursday, Blippar revealed that an update of its Blippbuilder AR platform, scheduled to arrive in July, will include WebAR, a toolkit for developing web-based AR experiences that customers can access through web links or QR codes.

WebAR is a much more robust offering than the Augmented Reality Digital Placement web-based AR format the company released in 2017. For instance, the platform supports surface detection for markerless tracking. WebAR can also launch AR experiences via virtual portals, image recognition, and object recognition.

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"I am very proud of the team for continuing to push the boundaries of AR so we can keep offering better tools and products that empower others to seamlessly create the best experiences possible," said Ambarish Mitra, founder of Blippar, in a statement.

"Taking AR beyond apps creates an easy distribution channel as the web is still predominant and solves one of the biggest barriers to AR adoption which has been the need to download a separate app to view the content. Once web AR is open to all consumers and developers, the possibilities become endless."

Since Candy Ventures purchased Blippar's assets at auction in January, the new Blippar has been relatively quiet. Nonetheless, with its re-emergence, the company makes good on promises to focus on Blippbuilder, a content creation platform designed for use by developers and non-developers.

"We are extremely grateful for the overwhelming support since December from our clients, partners, investors and everyone in the ecosystem and we are very thankful to everyone who has contributed to the Blippar journey so far in particular our team members, past and present, without whom we couldn't have built any of this," said Mitra.

Moreover, Blippar is adding a capability — web-based AR content without the need for a native app — that has gained a lot of traction over the past year, with Apple adding AR Quick Look to ARKit 2.0, Google bringing similar capabilities to ARCore and Google Search, and the 8th Wall Web platform gaining traction with high-profile advertisers like Sony Pictures, MillerCoors, and Toyota. In turn, Blippar gains an advantage over platforms like Snapchat and Facebook, platforms which call for native apps to be installed customers' devices. So, it's a good place to start for a company looking to get back on its feet.